Common Forms of Linkbait
Informational
Controversial
Humor
News
Tools

Benefits of Linkbait
Links – duh!
Link profile
Traffic
Branding
Bookmarks
Media Publicity

If you are looking to spread the word about a relatively boring industry then search Digg, Reddit, etc. to find what’s worked on these sites in the past pertaining to this industry.

Throw out ideas. Get them up on the whiteboard. Brainstorm.

Once your content is published you have to submit it to the social bookmarking and news sites.
Make sure you tag the story properly. Relevance and popularity are essential in choosing categories.

Keys to Promotion
Power account
Good titles & descriptions
Proper category & tags
Targeted sites

Top 10 lists
How To’s – Be Helpful and make sure your guide is easy to read
Current Events – In my opinion the best way to get instant results. Relaying accurate info is very important.
Offbeat or Extreme – Hardest to get your clients to approve but can be very succesful
Images – Use within a post and be unique

Crafting Social Linkbait
Research is extremely important
With the current events you need to know what’s happening
With the how-to guides you need to research what’s effective and working

Title & Description
Title’s and descriptions are where we see the most errors
Needs to be simple, strong, and focused
Once you have a title you need a story to back that title up
Make sure you capitalize the first letter of each word
Avoid spelling out numbers

Interact & Share
You need to have buddies to add comments and promote your story
Make friends on the social media sites that you use
Get you friends to vote on stuff
Return the favor when they ask

Social Media Tips
Relate to the community
Use images
Limit Ads
Offer a summary
No spelling errors, jargon mistakes, or bad information
Is it duplicate?
Check what worked before
Digg effect
Be link worthy
Submit at the right time

Introduction to social media, social news, social bookmarking. Rand’s and Neil’s presentations were excellent. I personally didn’t take away too much from this but it definitely had value for those who are less involved in the social arena. I did learn about Memeame which is a Spanish social news site that is really taking off. Word is that Guy Kawasaki’s site Truemors is also gaining momentum. Listening to Rebecca Kelly speak now about Linkbait. Will report more in a bit.

I have never attended an SMX, SES, or any sort of SEO/SEM type conference before. I never really saw the value in it but I figured since I had never been I should at least test the waters before completely dismissing it.

I just returned from the Internet Marketers of New York and Best of Web SMX pre-party for Leukemia & Lymphoma. I’m happy to say that it turned out to be a great event. Everyone I met was extremely nice, outgoing, and very excited to be amongst others with similar interests.

If figured it would be a nice gesture to link back to the folks I met.

Alison Rogers
DG Neary Realty Ltd.

Chris Elwell
Third Door Media

Chris Winfield
10e20

Danny Sullivan
Search Engine Land

Drew Hayslip
Text Link Ads

Jason Falls
Doe Anderson

Jim Bedell

Joe Lanzillo
Obliq Sound

Jonathan Dingman
Text Link Ads

Liana Evans
KeyRelevance

Michael Demby
AC Lion

Neil Patel
Advantage Consulting Services

Or Darom
888.com

Rand Fishkin
SEOmoz

Shawn Pearson
EBSCO

Stephanie Weingart
City Loyalty Card

Vanessa Fox
Zillow

There were many others too but since I didn’t get their cards I can’t recall their info. The pre-party was fun and I’m anxious to see what the actual conference will be like.

Submitting press releases is a small part of an overall SEO campaign. Usually beneficial, especially if you opt for some of the paid services from more popular sites like PRWeb.com or PR.com. If you’re generating new, unique, and original content, you’ll want credit for it in one of two ways. You can either post it to your blog or post it through the press release and article networks but not both. I used to think both was ok as long you posted the content to your site first and allowed it to be indexed and then syndicated it throughout the PR and article sites. I was wrong. Duplicate content and authority enter into this indexing equation. Even if you post the content to your site first and allow it to be indexed, not only will Google display and give credit to the site with the most authority but it will also deindex your site’s URL that the content is on.

Here is a timeline of content generation, publication, and syndication:

1. Generated press release
2. Posted to corporate blog
3. Release is now indexed in Google
4. Submitted press release to 4 free press release sites (Backlinks included)
5. Press release sites have been indexed for content
6. The Release’s original URL on the corporate blog has been deindexed
7. Overall site rankings dropped for two keyword phrases found in the title of the release

This obviously stinks but all may not be lost here. There are Backlinks that are contained within the content of the release on the PR sites. These have not been processed yet by Google so I’m not sure if the presence of these will hurt or help. So even though we’ve been hurt content-wise we may still gain rank from the anchor text in the links. I’ll have to return with an update on this.

To spread the word and get indexed for your content, post to your site or the press release sites but never both. Where and when you post first doesn’t seem to matter.

Answers.com has teamed up with WordPress to offer automatically linking definitions within WordPress blog posts. A function that will automatically be offered to WordPress users whose blog is hosted by WordPress. For bloggers who use WordPress on their own server there is a plugin available. Now I’m not entirely sure how this works but it seems as though when one is authoring a post in WordPress, the author has the option of activating the AnswerLinks (TM) icon. Activating this function will automatically scan the post and add a suggestive link to any words that could potentially be unknown to average readers.

“Typical suggestions will include names, technical terms or obscure language that may not be familiar to some readers. Only words confirmed by the author will be linked to definitions, assuring full editorial control.”

I can see how this would be beneficial in some way. If I ever come across a term I don’t recognize I’ll often navigate away from the page to Google the term or go to Dictionary.com. However, the obvious benefactor here is Answers.com. Not so long ago Answers.com acquired Dictionary.com. After this Google significantly dropped Answers.com in the index. This new maneuver by Answers.com and WordPress kind of hits Google in its soft underbelly. Google loves blogs and content. Combine blogging with a widget like AnswerLinks and you have a winning combination. I’m not sure how many self hosted WordPress users are going to use a feature like this but those who host on WordPress will be at least likely to try it out. Smart move Answers Corp! Let’s see if it works out for you.

I never speak negatively of people related to our industry, it’s simply bad form. However in this case, I feel like I have to defend myself. I was checking the backlinks to my site and noticed some traffic from ClipClip.org. I followed the link back and found a relatively negative post about Squareoak from a user named John. In the post, John is commenting on this Squareoak post that lists the javascript for auto populating many bookmarking sites. This javascript is something that bookmarking sites provide so that users can simply click on the bookmarklet in their toolbar and post whatever content they’re currently viewing. For some reason John thinks that my post is somehow spammy. Not only is this javascript provided by the bookmarking sites themselves but my suggestion of replacing a standard bookmarked URL with the actual javascript provided can help people save space in their toolbar. This increased efficiency also helps and promotes the intent of sites like ClipClip.org.

If people decide to use existing ClipClip.org functionality for spammy purposes that’s no fault of mine. It’s simply a little off-setting when someone with completely unoriginal ideas like ClipClip.org or URL.com associates my corporate image with spam. I detest spam, it’s the antithesis of the internet’s intent. Thanks for the shout out John but do me and other industry professionals a favor and keep your clips to yourself.

Oh and if you’re going to publicly criticize me, could you do it with more than a frowny face?

I have an industrial manufacturing client that had has over 200 pdf’s on their site and each file was lacking any information other than the file name. Since each pdf is a mechanical drawing of the products they sell, they potentially had the ability to rank higher for these products just by adding the product name to the title tag of each pdf. When you optimize a pdf there are a number of different fields where you can enter information. In Adobe Acrobat, got to file > properties to open the editable fields. You’ll see Title, Author, Subject, and Keywords. In this case I simply added titles to all 200+ pdfs. The results have been amazing. We are now ranking higher for virtually every product in the client catalogue.

If you missed it, there was a great article over at Search Engine land about optimizing pdfs.

Joost seriously must be close to the next big thing. I can simply run an S-Video cable out from my laptop to the tv, switch my resolution size and joost! I have a large assortment of programs to choose from to watch at my leisure. The video and sound quality is good and the user interface sort of makes you feel like you’re in the future. When I first started watching some of their shows I was pretty amazed at how easy the whole setup process was and pleased that in less than 5 minutes of downloading and setup, I was watching what looked like a pretty decent show from the National Geographic Channel. The first show I watched was actually not that great but I did notice how Joost was handling their advertising. A little reminder window popped up in the bottom right hand corner of the screen for United Airways. I felt that this method of advertising was perfect because the advertising remains effective and it doesn’t interrupt the program. I can absorb the program info and advertisement at the same time. This worked nicely. But then I switched to a documentary about West Point and was bombarded by full-fledged and repetitive Nike commercials. This was annoying because I was shown the same exact commercial twice with about 4 minutes of show in between. So I switched to another documentary called Picante about chili peppers. Seemed like a cool little documentary and it was, until I kept getting the same Nike ad over and over again. That did it for me and I shut it off.

Right now the only benefit of Joost is the ability to watch what you want when you want. The shows are ok but they seem more like pilot episodes that didn’t quite make it to mainstream cable. If advertising can remain in the reminder pop-up window format then they would have a winning delivery method. The normal commercials are…well…normal. No one really wants standard tv on their laptop. People want to watch their programs when they want them without the commercials. The compromise for Joost would be to kill the standard commercials and keep the small advertising pop-up window. If they’re simply replicating status quo television then why is this service useful? They’re in beta after all so I’ll give them another go in a month or so.